Jessica beamed walking down the aisle toward her eager groom, beautiful in an off-the-shoulder dress she bought for a steal in Dallas. Rick’s eyes moistened, not fully comprehending the significance of this day, they had come through so much to arrive at these nuptials. His storm chaser groomsmen grinned and poked at each other agreeing how hot she looked, genuinely happy for this couple they had known for so long, with whom they hunted the terrible twisters of Tornado Alley.
Hazy thoughts merged into one of their house together on a quiet Norman street: dogs yelping, mowers humming, children playing; steady suburban bliss for spouses beginning life together. Rick teaching at the University and Jessica working at KOKH on the weekends, the Tahoe traded for a Honda sedan and a babyseat; their journey ending up in the peaceful outskirts of a college town they knew well, with a conclusion this couple only dreamed of.
After years of dangerous, adrenaline-pumping pursuit of natural weather phenomena, Rick and Jessica settled down into domesticity and routine, eschewing a volatile, reckless lifestyle for one of patterns and predictability, consistency and certainty. They were happy together, comfortable with sameness rather than the adventure of life on the road in the face of death. This was a switch voluntarily made, trading wild mercurial love for marital oneness. Rick pictured himself holding his wife early in the morning, lovingly brushing her hair back over her ear, misty about lost opportunity even as the CRACKLE of the blaze snapped him out of his daydream.
Clay yelled from the fire break, he saw an opening out of the closing circle of flames. Motionless, Rick was quickly rolling through might-have-beens in his mind as he and Jessica stood by the truck. Clay scouted the scene around their dead-end cul-de-sac: no roads, no turns, no water, no helicopter, no GPS, no cell phones, no laptop, no 9-1-1 calls, no fire/rescue teams, no knights riding glistening white steeds would show up where they were trapped whisking them away from peril.
They would have to run to higher ground, some refuge from all this dark, suffocating smoke and burning, oppressive heat.
Rick moved with resignation, sadly, toward Clay, pulling Jessica by the arm, wondering if his soft suburban fantasy would ever come true; gripped by fear that their escape route seemed to be through the a dark tunnel of trees, leading to an unknown destination of indefinite peril. Like devil’s throat off Cozumel, each team member follows the next, linked hand-in-hand, or hand-in-fin, restricted all around, unable to see, or stretch wide, pushing slowly through the passage.
The bed of straw, pine needles, dried leaves, and branches tamped down with each step, crunching and shuffling as they hurried down the trail. With dryness in the air and underfoot, it was understandable why wildfires consumed acre after acre of fuel-rich woodland. Clay led them through a winding journey seemingly going nowhere but at least they were leaving the fire.
Rick’s instincts to path-through-plan nagged him as he dragged Jessica bouncily down the path like a rag doll lagging slowly behind, hitting saplings and trunks as if a pinball. While they hurried, Rick wondered if this maze was a question with no answer, a puzzle with a missing piece. His bias toward action included favoritism of maps and planned escape routes via radar tracking, so he was as frustrated as he was frightened!
Were they going downward in elevation, or did it just appear to Jessica that the plunge down devil’s throat this time happened in a dry hot land descending into a dark, smoky grave?
(to be continued in Part 8...)
©Mark H. Pillsbury (this work of fiction was composed on 19 July 2011)
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